South East driving conditions...

[woodbloke]

I know that conditions have been bad for driving, but surely not this bad :shock: - Rob

 

[woodbloke]

No one spotted it yet?..clue's in the pic :wink: - Rob

 

[Philly]

Wow - conditions were so bad they started driving on the wrong side of the road....... :lol:
Philly

 

[paulm]

Yep, that bad !

I live on the outskirts of Basingstoke and left work about 25 miles away at 3pm and finally got home at 6pm, others took 9 hours :shock:

I sat stationary about 3 miles away from home for over an hour before deciding to park up as best I could and walk the rest of the way. I had boots and hat etc but the problem was I had a very heavy bag with laptop and important files etc that I had to carry and didn't dare leave in the car and it weighed a bl##dy ton !

Took about 45 mins to walk home from there and I was nearly doa when I finally arrived :lol:

Wife and daughters had been in town shopping and couldn't get out of the multistorey car park and eventually gave up and walked the similar distance back.

Will try and recover the car at lunchtime and at least get it a bit closer if I can as I don't think there's much chance still of getting up our hill or drive.

Not sure what it will cost to get the other car out of the multistorey when we can eventually get to it :shock:

Still, all safe and well at least

Cheers, Paul

 

[WellsWood]

Made the mistake of taking my daughter Christmas shopping yesterday to Bluewater. It took us 3 1/2 hours to get back, a journey that would normally take about 20 mins My wife's journey home from work was the same story, 4 hours to get from Beckton to Welling. It's about 8 miles as the crow flies, but thanks to East London's truly pathetic facilities for crossing the river she was faced with twice that distance via the Blackwall tunnel, though even at peak times this rerely takes more than about an hour.

The annoying thing was the roads didn't seem too bad to me, but the sheer volume of traffic coupled with the complete absence of gritting on any but the major routes meant that the back roads which normally would ease the flow were all but impassable.

Serves me right I suppose for doing my usual "leave it till the last minute" thing :roll:

 

[wizer]

Same for my wife. It took her three hours to get home on the trains (normally 45mins) from London and then the car was stuck, she had to get some blokes to push her out onto the road. All with daughter stranded at nursery. Makes me feel terrible inadequate! Outside our house is like a skating rink. The last few nights wife and I have taken to watching out the window to see the cars pirouette past our house. Cars, abandoned, cars crashing by the hour. It's mayhem

 

[lurker]

The scandinavians & North Americans must be P!$$ing themselves laughing at such a trivial amount of snow is causing all these problems in the UK.

 

[StevieB]

Its bad enough that I cannot motorbike to work at the moment, and have to suffer the train :evil: Roll on spring!

Steve

 

[BMac]

Gritting - I was listening to a local news item on the lack of road gritting in some areas here (NI) and a representative of the Dept. of Environment said "Councils are not obliged to grit roads, they do it as a courtesy to drivers".
I didn't know that.

Brendan

 

[wizer]

I must get some bags of grit ready for next year. The council are obviously not bothered about doing side roads. What on earth am I pay council tax for? I DON'T BELIEVE IT!

 

[woodbloke]

I DON'T BELIEVE IT!

Tom - you're missing a piccy of Victor now :lol: - Rob

 

[jlawrence]

I know some in the south don't believe they live in the same country as the rest of us but how come they can get away with driving like that ?

 

[dedee]

looks perfectly normal to me.

south east where?


Andy

 

[jpt]

I wonder which country that was taken in, unless they have reversed the picture.

To top it all my mother has just rung and told me that Tesco have just rung her to say they have cancelled her delivery arranged several weeks ago because they have stopped all deliveries country wide.

So Christmas ruined for thousands, hope your not affected.

john

 

[Ironballs]

Having seen the effect snow/winter tyres have on your cars abilities when skiing abroad, I'm seriously considering getting a set of winter wheels and doing a switch over from Nov to Feb.

We live above the local snow line here so will always get snow when others have rain (or clear sunshine :x ) and it means the difference between being housebound and getting out and about

 

[Henning]

The scandinavians & North Americans must be P!$$ing themselves laughing at such a trivial amount of snow is causing all these problems in the UK.

:wink:

It can be bad here too, though. It seems the first snow is always a surprise to most people.
What they do here around Oslo though, is they use a lot of Salt to melt any snow and ice on the road. Which leads to serious rust in most cars.
But leaves the roads rather safe. Until you enter a road which isn't salted as bacon that is. And in total, this makes driving around here most about keeping enough windshield wash available.

Spent some time up in the north hunting this fall. The day of me going home there was 20 centimeters of snow that had fallen during the night. They didn't even bother getting it off, as it was so little from what they are used to. Nice to drive on, although you has to take your time.

 

[dickm]

Interesting comment about snow/winter tyres. I fitted mine last week, before the snow (GLOAT, I think), as we have started getting a bit more snow up here again in Scotland's "cold shoulder". But I'm always dubious as to how much difference they really make. Our neighbout had to abandon his car at the foot of the brae last night, but he did admit that his tyres were just about on the legal limit. I get the feeling that, with a decent amount of tread, there's not that much difference between M&S and ordinary tyres.
But what do others think?

 

[studders]

I get the feeling that, with a decent amount of tread, there's not that much difference between M&S and ordinary tyres.
But what do others think?

It's been some time since I was employed by Goodyear but I seem to recall that mud and snow tyres remain more flexible in cold conditions. They also tend to have a more.. err... 'agricultural' tread pattern that doesn't clog so easily. Plus they have the facility to be fitted with studs though I'm not sure that they are legal for use on public roads in the UK. I dare say things may have changed though.

 

[Harbo]

I saw TV advert for snow tyres when I was in Canada a few weeks ago - the tyres had hollow tubular holes in them, which the snow /ice pushed into to improve the grip? Seems a strange idea?

I have just driven from Yorkshire back to Hampshire this afternoon through heavy rain, sleet, hailstones and thunder storms. But most of the problems were caused by the heavy traffic - the 50mph speed limits were a joke when crawling along at a few mph or at a complete standstill. The Christmas rush had definitely started!

Happy Christmas

Rod

 

[devonwoody]

I lived in Old Basing in 1963, (near Basingstoke) the snow started Christmas Eve and it was Easter before the last of the snow cleared.

The lanes had trenches and sometimes the wheels didnt get to the bottom of the rut and I lost all the paint off the underside of my new car that year.

So if the thaw comes this weekend this is just a little cold snap.